Auction of Apple's first computer expected to top $160k

A rare piece of Apple history will go on sale later this month when Christie's auctions Apple's first product, the Apple I personal computer, for an estimated $160,000-$240,000 on Nov. 23.

The Apple I, acknowledged by many as the first "personal computer," was Apple's first product offering. Approximately 200 units were hand-built by Apple cofounder Steve Wozniak and priced at $666.66. With a completely pre-assembled motherboard, the computer helped to spark the home computer revolution when it was released in July 1976.

High-end auction house Christie's is selling a "superb example" of the Apple I, with an estimate ranging from $160,000-$240,000. Even at the low end of the estimate, the computer will sell for over 60 times its original cost, approximately $2,500 after adjusting for inflation.

Apple I units have become quite the collector's item, with an estimated 30 to 50 still in existence. In 1999, an Apple I reportedly sold for $50,000.

Source: Christie's

The auction includes the Apple I in its original shipping box and the Apple I cassette interface, as well as a signed letter from Apple cofounder Steve Jobs. The return address on the original packaging shows that the unit shipped from Jobs' parents' house.

Christie's will sell the Apple I as part of a larger Nov. 23 London auction including a cypher machine, a first edition presentation copy of a publication by Charles Babbage, and a variety of other "valuable printed books and manuscripts.

Apple's unique role in the history of computing and the loyal following it has acquired have driven sales of pieces of Apple history before. In October, the owner of The Mac Museum of New Jersey sold a large collection of vintage Macs on eBay for $10,000. In 2008, an early engineering worker at Apple auctioned off the company's original trade show sign and Wozniak's toolbox.

Typical overpriced Apple, you can get a netbook for $300 without paying the Apple tax.

P.S. I wish I'd kept my Mac Plus, my wife threw it away, the mouse was held together with Bluetac and string and it worked (well sort of if you hit the side, ju-ust right you could get the monitor to go from a small dot in the centre of the screen to displaying a desktop).

Better than my Bose, better than my Skullcandy's, listening to Mozart through my LeBron James limited edition PowerBeats by Dre is almost as good as my Sennheisers.

Ended up using many lesser computers until the Mac Pluses came out. I absolutely loved that Mac Plus but out grew it after a bit, now my iPhone 3G runs circles around that machine. I took a side trip away from Apple when the company offerings really got out of whack with reality. A few months with NT and I was forced to Linux. OS/X brought me back to the Mac on my laptop.

Given that history I've always wanted an Apple and frankly would bid on the machine if I had the coin. Those years of my life where often spent reading Byte or Dr. Dobbs or grabing whatever job I could while still in school. Worst the economy tanked early in the 80's so even after high school new computers didn't come early. I never took my eye off the stuff coming out of Apple though and when buying that Mac Plus it was a true feeling of a revolution at hand. Followed by the story we all know.

In all seriousness, that's a nice piece of history right there. It's amazing how far technology has come. My first computer was a used Macintosh IIcx, running at a whopping 16 Mhz, with a 40 megabyte hard drive and 1 megabyte of ram. When I upgraded it to 4 megs of ram, it cost me $200 (four 1 megabyte modules at $50 each).

When I first saw these pictures, I thought everything looked familiar, and I remember watching the actual eBay auction. These items were listed on eBay less than a year ago, and sold for only $50,000 (still a bit out of my league). That was the starting bid, and there was surprisingly only one bidder, that won the computer at the very end of the auction. I recall there was a lot of press at the time, and searching on google, here are some links on the story:

A rare piece of Apple history will go on sale later this month when Christie's auctions Apple's first product, the Apple I personal computer, for an estimated $160,000-$240,000 on Nov. 23.

The Apple I, acknowledged by many as the first "personal computer," was Apple's first product offering. Approximately 200 units were hand-built by Apple cofounder Steve Wozniak and priced at $666.66. With a completely pre-assembled motherboard, the computer helped to spark the home computer revolution when it was released in July 1976.

High-end auction house Christie's is selling a "superb example" of the Apple I, with an estimate ranging from $160,000-$240,000. Even at the low end of the estimate, the computer will sell for over 60 times its original cost, approximately $2,500 after adjusting for inflation.

Apple I units have become quite the collector's item, with an estimated 30 to 50 still in existence. In 1999, an Apple I reportedly sold for $50,000.

Source: Christie's

The auction includes the Apple I in its original shipping box and the Apple I cassette interface, as well as a signed letter from Apple cofounder Steve Jobs. The return address on the original packaging shows that the unit shipped from Jobs' parents' house.

Christie's will sell the Apple I as part of a larger Nov. 23 London auction including a cypher machine, a first edition presentation copy of a publication by Charles Babbage, and a variety of other "valuable printed books and manuscripts.

Apple's unique role in the history of computing and the loyal following it has acquired have driven sales of pieces of Apple history before. In October, the owner of The Mac Museum of New Jersey sold a large collection of vintage Macs on eBay for $10,000. In 2008, an early engineering worker at Apple auctioned off the company's original trade show sign and Wozniak's toolbox.

The person who buys this has a lot of money to burn on nonsense instead of giving it to a reputable charity where it can do a lot of good for people in today's horrific economy.

i wont argue the point, as long as you have the same disdain for people who buy $20 million paintings, $150,000 cars, million dollar houses.

also, remember that poor people existed, as will exist, outside the "horrific economy"... are you in favor of this money being spent in a "good" economy, which has potentially more heavily downtrodden poor people...

Typical overpriced Apple, you can get a netbook for $300 without paying the Apple tax.

P.S. I wish I'd kept my Mac Plus, my wife threw it away, the mouse was held together with Bluetac and string and it worked (well sort of if you hit the side, ju-ust right you could get the monitor to go from a small dot in the centre of the screen to displaying a desktop).

I still have my first Mac, the venerable Mac Plus. It still works like new; but I last used it around 1993 in business for anything serious. Can't bring myself to sell it although I've sold quite a few others and given away a few.

I still have my first Mac, the venerable Mac Plus. It still works like new; but I last used it around 1993 in business for anything serious. Can't bring myself to sell it although I've sold quite a few others and given away a few.

I Still have my original 128K Mac and an extra motherboard that I modified to give it a whopping 512K (and replaced the original ROMs with EEPROM copies of the 'new' ROMs). Sold the Plus I owned - had upgraded it to a 68020 and 4 Meg RAM ( I think at that point one meg SIMMs were approx. $250.00 EACH. I had to sell it so I could afford my Mac II with a RGB monitor (and a free kong monitor). The Mac II easily cost $5000 even with my discount at the TAMU Bookstore Micro Center.

I managed to get most of the money I put into them back out (with student or developers discount prices) - with one exception. I had a brand new LaserWriter II NTX with max'd out RAM (12 Megs if memory serves me correctly). I needed it for a page layout program I was working on as a consultant. I purchased one and they reimbursed me for it (told me to keep it when the project was cancelled a few months later). I remember very well the $7000 price tag on that printer! A few years later it started acting up and after a little diagnosis I found out that it needed a new motherboard. The part cost around $300 (in 1998) but since printer prices had really started to go down I decided to see if it was worth putting that much into it to repair it. The printer wasn't even worth the more than $300 it would have cost to repair it.

Have a pile of other Apple stuff also - my wife keeps wanting me to get rid of it but I've managed to hold on to most everything I really wanted to keep though.

I would have loved to have owned one of the Apple I computers - wasn't able to afford it then and don't have the bucks for one now either. (I helped a friend build an IMSAI around that time - which I would love to have now also - but given the choice the Apple I would be my first choice.)